A Better Understanding of Photography

First off...I would like to say some things about photography.

So what is photography? What is its purpose? Its main, sole purpose? Think about it...

Dictionary says: 

"the process or art of producing images of objects on sensitized surfaces by the chemical action of light or of other forms of radiant energy,"

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1. "the art or practice of taking and processing photographs."
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1. "is the art, science, and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film, or electronically by means of an image sensor,"
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3. Ok yeah sure. These are great definitions of photography. These are the scientific definitions of photography. The hard core stuff. What my definition, or the philosophical definition of photography would be something like, 
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5. "Photography captures a moment and tells a story".
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7. Photography is all about capturing a moment in time. It is not a video, where you can see different moments in time. Photos show just one moment, one second, of what happened previously. Therefore, that one moment will always, always tell a story. No matter what. Whether it is the most inartistic picture, or the ugliest picture, you can always pick out a story. Even if it's not photoshopped, just unidentifiable, or the strangest picture, the photographer was trying to portray a story. Photoshop is just there to enhance a picture better. Photographers photoshop their pictures just to make their picture look more appealing to the eyes and for positive emotions. 
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9. A way to compare the point of telling a story to school is with English. Remember in English, there are literary devices, such as imagery. Imagery is just painting a picture (which eventually tells a story) with words. Photography is visually portraying a story. So, imagery is giving a story through words and photography is giving a story through pictures. Thus, the two are connected... 
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11. Some effective ways to try and find a story in a picture is to look at the light. Looking at the light will give you the time of day. Then you can look at the background. Identify the type of place and associate it with the time of day. An example would be, an evening at a restaurant. Then, look for a subject or some details. At that time, you are trying to piece the whole picture together, adding in the subjects and minor details. An example would be, the family is eating tacos at a busy restaurant around evening time. Even a scenic picture would have a story even though it would be more basic. An example would be, the wind blows the field of grass as the clouds keep covering the sun. So, any type of picture will portray a story.

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2. Anyway, the whole point of this blog is to show you some pictures,so here are some pictures. Although, I would like to apply the point of finding a story in these pictures. These are all just some random pictures I have taken pretty recently, and try to create or follow the story within each one. :)

I took this picture in my backyard when a storm rolled in. It was a massive, big storm, and it was having those winds coming by. With this picture, I had it put into black and white. That gives it more volume and dramatizes the clouds more. 

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   This picture was actually taken in San Francisco, California. I took this at a train station, while waiting for the bart. That experience was actually the first time I rode in a train in the USA...for as long as I can remember... (I have rode in it a couple times when I was younger, but this is the first time I can actually account in my memory.) This station was called fruitvale, a small town near Berkeley, and there's nothing very photographically intriguing in this picture, except the way you zoom into the depth of field. 

   

   
   

   This was taken in Lake George, New York. One of the days we stayed in New York, we planned to go hiking up a mile on the mountains. Everyone said that there was a 100 mile view up at the top and was totally worth it. (It was worth it!) So...we went hiking. To get to the trail, we had to pass this walkway above the highway. Well, I guess there is something intriguing about this picture. This picture shows great depth and shows a different look of perception. 

   
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4. Conclusively...I hope you learnt a bit about photography and got a better understanding about it...Remember, photography is all about telling a story... :D
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6. Hey guys! I finally reached a 1,000 views! So exciting!
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(First definition of photography was taken from Dictionary.com)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/photography?s=t&path=/ 

(Second definition of photography was taken from google definitions)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/photography?s=t&path=/

(Third definition of photography was taken from Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography

G-Force

On May 30th, our orchestra and band from our school to go to Hershey's Amusement Park in Harrisburg, PA. So in the morning we had our music competitions against other schools and then we got to roam around the park afterward. 

So at the park, there is this roller coaster called Storm Runner. This roller coaster is amazing!! (I am a big roller coaster person!) They shoot you forward super fast and you have this big drop and then other loops to go through. It's crazy good. I think that would be one of my big favorites at Hershey. :)

I give credits to my very close friend, Amy Lu. She took a picture very similar to this, and it looked really professional. So I took one like it, and here it is. This is of storm runner as well. I don't normally take pictures with the sun in it shining, but in this picture, I managed to get it in an angle where it doesn't add too much light to the picture. 

And obviously this is the photoshopped version of the picture above. Mainly, temperature is added to give it a warmer feeling. This one looks a lot better though.

So after we grazed through the park, we had an awards ceremony. The awards ceremony was from the performances we did in the morning against a few other schools. Overall, our school did very well in our categories! :D So this is a photo of the stairs going up. It has that oldern look to it. 

This is the same picture as the one above except I cropped it at the top and filtered it to get a black vignette border. This would be a great wallpaper. 

These were the benches in the amphitheater. I just wanted to capture the benches leveling up, and I got that in an angle up to the top. There is this filter also added onto it. This filter changes the color and tones down the color a lot. 

Paved flowers

The next couple pictures are ones that I took because I was bored..... I had nothing better to do, so I thought, why don't I take some pictures just for my blog. And here they go:

We have this small bush in our front yard and gives off flowers around May. I picked a flower and dropped it onto the sidewalk. It had just rained so the pavement and the flower was still wet. I got a drop down shot, which allows you to view the flower all the way down at eye level. 

This is the same scene as the top, but in a different angle. It also has a bigger view of the sidewalk in front of the flower, pushing the flower farther back in view. 

Just to make things more interesting, I placed another flower right next to the previous one. This picture is zoomed out more, allowing you to see more of the background in front of the flower and behind. you get a depth of the sidewalk because you see that it extends out farther. I also love the great detail that is captured in the pavement in all three pictures. It really adds some close up reality to the picture....details we don't observe everyday.